


Six Degrees of Separation

by historymiss



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Gen, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-16
Updated: 2013-07-16
Packaged: 2017-12-20 09:45:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 761
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/885803
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/historymiss/pseuds/historymiss
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Six little drabbles about Newt Geiszler and Hermann Gottlieb, and how they’re more similar than they think. Spoilers for Pacific Rim.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Six Degrees of Separation

1\. 

A list of things that are cool, by Newton Geiszler (Age Ten)

1\. Spiders.  
2\. Like are you serious, all the spiders, have you seen their legs they've got EIGHT.  
3\. NOT SALLY-ANNE GREEN  
4\. Power Rangers but not the Power Rangers in Power Rangers the monsters in Power Rangers.  
a) I get sad when they die they're way cooler than the dumb humans it's not WEIRD its called EMPERTHEY I heard one of mom's talkshows talk about it it's probably cause I'm EUORPEAN.  
5\. Getting a dog, MOM

2.

Hermann Gottlieb is eleven when he moves to England and by the time he's twelve he's lost his accent completely. His sister mocks him for it, gently, but only on good days. That first year had been hard on both of them, decades after a war that still for some reason coloured them as the enemy (moving into a school that has just done its local history project on World War Two hadn't helped). Kids yelled at them both at school, mocked and bullied them despite the teacher's best efforts.

It had been harder on Hermann, though. Karla hadn't had that bout of polio. Karla didn't have a limp, or a cane. Karla didn't have to sit out football, or rugby, or netball, and watch the other children run (always away). 

Hermann decides that the silence is a badge of honour, and begins to play games with the tiles on the sports hall ceiling, the number of goals scored. He gets quite good at it.

3\. 

Alright, so it's not cool to squeal at the giant monster skull.

Newt does it anyway. And then he takes a picture.

He's allowed, he thinks: he's twenty-three, just finishing up a Master's in zoology and this- this is the kind of thing he's been seeing in his dreams since he was eight years old. Yes, it killed hundreds of people. And that's very sad. And Newt had watched with everyone else on K-day, half a fork of cold pasta in his mouth as the kaiju the world later dubbed 'Trespasser' rampaged its way across the Eastern seaboard, praying that it would be stopped. 

But goddamn, this thing was awesome. Truly awesome, in the old sense of the word, as in 'deserving of a bit of a squeal now and then'. 

Newton Geiszler is twenty-three, and he's found, finally, the monsters he's been waiting for.

4\. 

'Giant Monster attacks America' becomes page three news, just after the football scores and the latest celebrity goings-on. Hermann still follows it, though, from his dorm in Oxford. He doesn't care about the Kaiju. Oh, he cares about them in the abstract sense, as in, he cares about them eating everyone on the planet, but what he's more interested in is the pattern.

Kaiju, like everything, are creatures of habit, and so is their portal. Hermann begins to work on a theory, charting out Kaiju appearances in a great and rather beautiful pattern, filling endless notebooks and chalkboards with his numbers. He even publishers a few papers- it helps on the way to his PhD.

It's not long before the Pan-Pacific Defence Corps comes knocking, as he hoped they would. It's an unlikely way to save the world, but Hermann's grateful for the chance all the same.

5.

They expected the rush of alien thoughts, the cavernous feeling of a body so much bigger than their own, the coldness of black water and the endless fall of the gate. What they did not expect was this: that their own brains would be so similar.

Yes, there's differences. Newt's brain can only be described as American: brash and loud and overconfident, the veneer of bravery as thin and brittle as ice. But there's familiar feelings there. Displacement. Loneliness. A need, deep down inside, to prove himself. 

It's a cliche, and it embarasses them both, but there you go. It turns out that maybe the two outcast nerdy scientists might have more in common than they thought. Newt offers Hermann the chance to never talk about it again. Hermann agrees heartily.

6.

A list of things that are cool, by Doctors N. Geiszler and H. Gottlieb, PhD.

1\. Saving the world.  
2\. Saving the world, SUCKERS. (Newton you can't put that twice and it was a group effort besides)  
3\. Hermann smells  
4\. Newton doesn't understand the definition of cool, unless there's something about my odour he finds appealing, in which case the compliment is appreciated but unwelcome.  
5\. You two are grown men. Get back to work. (xoxo Tendo)


End file.
